The exhibit "Art Into Architecture" at Bullseye Gallery -- which features glass pieces fabricated for building projects by mostly local architecture firms -- is a little bit like a collection of puzzle pieces, each from a different puzzle.

In most cases, they are beautiful works. Vibrantly colorful with glossy textures, the translucency of the glass transforms the light passing through these dense, kiln-formed pieces.

Bullseye Glass Company is at the forefront of a larger burgeoning artistic glass movement, as evidenced by its own display space inside the Portland Art Museum's Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art and in other international collections such as London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

At the same time, Bullseye Glass' works increasingly are being integrated into building projects in Portland and beyond, where they can act as sculptural art pieces or be incorporated into architectural settings calling for pizazz. They also could be enlisted as flashy distractions from otherwise mediocre architectural forms.

For The Casey, a condo under construction a few blocks from the gallery at Northwest 12th Avenue and Everett Street, Portland firm GBD Architects (designers of the adjacent five-building Brewery Blocks development) incorporated multihued glass pieces into the exterior facade, the lobby and other public spaces. Arguably in no contemporary building will this radiant glass be so prominent, particularly when it's backlit at night like a lantern.

Yet even if the glass is beautiful, one needs to be able to see and sense the architectural context, which is where "Art Into Architecture" (produced in tandem with BECon, an industry kiln-formed glass conference) often falls short. Despite the talk of "glass art," this show feels somewhat like a product showroom. Obviously, you can't put buildings in a gallery, but with technology or some other means the exhibit could have better evoked a three-dimensional sense of place. That's where the art succeeds or fails; but not here.

For example, in a private home, artist and fly fisherman Walter Gordinier designed a blue-green glass that mimics the look of a riverbed through clear water. The glass art is a marvelously dense, deep array of subtly changing hues. But in the accompanying photo of the home, where the material is used for all the stair treads and the floor of a small catwalk, it looks over the top and almost gaudy.

The incorporation of artist Richard Parrish's glass works for a nondenominational chapel at a new children's hospital in Denver, designed by the Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership of Portland, is more restrained. The glittering glass here is an abstract interpretation of traditional church stained glass, a soulful prism of light. But a little also goes a long way, amid a muted space clad mostly with stained wood.

The best example may be Orfeo Quagliata's glass installation comprising the front desk of the Murano Hotel in Tacoma. Interior designer Corso Staicoff of Portland paired the piece -- a linear spectrum of hues not unlike the color bars of a TV test pattern -- with a subdued architectural palette of exposed concrete and white terrazzo floor. Not every environment can handle such vivacious cubes of color and light.

In other words, the puzzle piece has to fit.

Compound Gallery at Just Be Complex in Old Town has made a habit of bringing talented young Asian artists, particularly from Japan, across the Pacific to Portland. This month's exhibit comes in conjunction with a book called "Bliss Express: Illustrating Happiness," in which artists muse on the sunnier side of life.

Canadian-born illustrator Marcos Chin's print of women exercising, "Workout," has the meticulous order and polished style of Wayne Thiebaud's mid-20th century Pop-art depictions of pie and other diner foods. Chinese artist Ruan Yunting, also known as Rain, has created numerous graphic novels, comics and books of illustrations. Her style here fuses the delicate tones of watercolor with the surreal energy of anime, although the effect feels eerily like an Enya song brought to life.

The real treat of "Bliss Express" is Tokyo artist Aya Kondo's woodblock prints of youthful rockers, raising guitars and tossing paper airplanes in works like "Atarime Nerai" and "Monyo Droped." Bliss comes not from absorbing an imposed theme, but from seeing simple, captivating work like this.